Wolf seniors Taylor Brotemarkle (2) and Chloe Marzocca celebrate their teammate’s success. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)
Check another thing off the to-do list.
The Coupeville High School varsity volleyball squad is methodically garnering achievements as the season plays out.
The Wolves beat the Evil Empire (La Conner).
Won a battle of undefeated teams with Darrington.
And now have upended Orcas Island, the defending Northwest 2B/1B League champs, sweeping the visiting Vikings in straight sets Thursday.
The Homecoming week win lifts Coupeville to 5-0 in conference action, 6-0 overall, and Cory Whitmore’s squad has yet to lose a set this go-round.
Dominating from start to finish against Orcas, the Wolves claimed a 25-8, 25-13, 25-15 triumph, giving the CHS spike program its best start since the 2019 team won its first seven matches.
Coupeville is also one of just three 2B schools still undefeated this season, with Adna (7-0) and Freeman (8-0) the others.
About the only thing which slowed the Wolves down Thursday was the perils of inter-island transportation, which had Orcas arriving a half hour late for an afternoon tilt.
Once the teams were on the floor and warmed up, the CHS net crew was locked-in and in full-on destruction mode.
A tip winner from Mia Farris kicked off the match, and Coupeville rode hot streaks at the service line from Tenley Stuurmans and Teagan Calkins to blow things wide open.
Calkins, who was honored as an Athlete of the Week winner by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association earlier in the day, dropped a nasty ace on the Vikings, the ball skidding away to stake her squad to a 19-4 lead.
While Orcas briefly (very briefly) rallied, the Wolves closed out the opening frame with a flurry of kills off the scorching fingertips of Farris, Madison McMillan, and Lyla Stuurmans.
The second set was almost a mirror image of the first, with the Wolves peppering the Vikings with brutal serves, popping note-perfect passes to each other, and crushing kills in all directions.
CHS setter Katie Marti, running from one side of the floor to the other, even went renegade at one point, using her leg to keep a ball alive with a soccer-style kick.
The perfectly legal, yet rarely used, play rocked the Orcas defense, or maybe they were just in run-and-hide mode because Marti’s kick was followed 0.02 seconds later by Farris peeling paint off the back line with a juicy kill.
Everyone was getting in on the action, with Jada Heaton walloping a winner at the net, before sophomore Dakota Strong delivered her first-ever varsity kill.
It came on set point and unleashed a tidal wave of joy from the Wolf bench, which mobbed her.
It wasn’t the last time that scene would play out, either, as another sophomore, Lexis Drake, matched Strong by closing out set #3, and the match, with HER first-ever varsity kill.
That winner capped a crush of big hits, with the Wolves taking turns seeing who could spin the nastiest kill against an Orcas squad which lost its All-League masher to graduation after winning last year’s crown.
Madison McMillan launches the attack.
Whitmore, who notched his 94th win with the CHS volleyball program, was pleased to have a low stress win during one of the most frantic weeks on the school calendar.
Now the Wolf spikers can go participate in Homecoming-related events the next two days content in the knowledge they’ll carry a spotless record into the new week.
“We played very, very clean for the first two sets,” Whitmore said. “I think we missed like only two serves in that time.
“We stayed very in system, even when they tried to move us around,” he added.
“There were some errors later, but the girls recognized what was happening, took control, and fixed things on their own. I like to see that.”
Thursday stats:
Taylor Brotemarkle — 7 digs
Teagan Calkins — 9 kills, 8 digs, 1 assist, 1 block assist, 4 aces
Lexis Drake — 1 kill
Mia Farris — 9 kills, 13 digs, 1 assist
Jada Heaton — 1 kill
Katie Marti — 3 kills, 7 digs, 27 assists, 2 aces
Madison McMillan — 8 kills, 7 digs, 1 ace
Dakota Strong — 1 kill
Lyla Stuurmans — 4 kills, 5 digs, 2 solo blocks, one block assist
Tenley Stuurmans — 1 kill, 1 dig, 1 ace
